Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computing adapters, and more specifically, to multi-channel USB to subrate channel systems.
Description of Related Art
Several protocols have been developed to allow low-speed peripheral devices to connect to computing devices or systems. For example, the inter-integrated circuit (I2C) bus, the serial peripheral interface (SPI) bus, the 1-wire bus, the UNI/O bus, and similar protocols might be used for such purposes. Any such bus may be referred to herein as a serial peripheral bus. Also, the terms “bus” and “protocol” refer to a component for connecting low-speed peripheral device to a computing device or system. Such low-speed peripheral devices may include electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) devices, memory chips, digital-to-analog or analog-to-digital converters, monitors, speakers, display screens, clocks, and other devices. A system management bus (SMBus) is an enhanced implementation of I2C and uses a two-wire bus used for low-bandwidth communications among components of a system, especially power related chips such as a laptop's rechargeable battery subsystem, as well as other components such as temperature sensors and lid switches.
A universal serial bus (USB) cable can provide an interface between a host computing device and one or more peripheral devices, such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants, and removable media drives. Such peripheral devices may also be referred to as slave devices or downstream devices. The host computing device, which may also be referred to as a master device or an upstream device, is typically a computer system such as a personal computer.
It is desired to provide improved USB to I2C adapters.